]]>Sony’s upcoming internet TV service got its first major content injection Wednesday, with Sony announcing that it has struck a deal to add 22 networks from Viacom to the service’s channel lineup. The deal will also give Sony TV subscribers access to Viacom’s TV Everywhere apps and video-on-demand services.

This is the first time that Viacom has struck a deal with an internet-based TV service for its content, which will include networks like MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, VH1 and Spike, but also lesser-known networks like VH1 Soul, BET Gospel and Palladia.

In other words: Sony got the whole package — and that may be a problem: As companies like Sony and Dish prepare to launch internet-based TV services, they’re struggling to figure out how to differentiate themselves from traditional pay TV, which younger viewers are fleeing because of high costs and inflexible channel bundles.

No one in the industry seems to be ready for a real pick-and-chose type unbundled service, but even traditional cable operators have long tried to only get the popular networks their viewers are actually watching, as opposed to the take-it-or-leave it bundles like the one that Viacom is now selling Sony.

The fact that Sony had to pay for all 22 channels sets a precedent for its deals with other networks, and virtually guarantees that Sony’s final line-up of channels will look very much like your average cable or satellite TV subscription today, complete with the hefty price tag — which will make it that much harder for the service to actually get people to subscribe.

]]>MTV may not be playing as many music videos as it used to, but the network definitely wants to be where music is happening — and nowadays, that’s online. MTV’s parent Viacom just announced a partnership with Spotify that will bring tunes and playlists from the music service to the apps and websites of MTV, VH1 and CMT.

The integration will go live later this fall, and will also involve MTV building playlists for Spotify that will be available to everyone on the music service (think the hits of Jersey Shore), with 150 playlists available at any given time. This focus on playlists could be seen as an answer to Beats, the music service that was recently purchased by Apple and that has made curated playlists one of its key differentiators. Then again, subscription music services have featured playlists from music magazines and brands for a long time, and it doesn’t really seem to have made a difference in convincing users of the idea of music subscriptions.

The integration of music directly into Viacom’s mobile apps could be a bigger boon for Spotify. A Spotify spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that the music will be made available to anyone who has signed up for a free or paid Spotify account — which could drive new sign-ups for the music service.

]]>No Daily Show for you: Customers of Cable One, a smaller cable company with 730,000 paying subscribers across 13 states, have been unable to watch their favorite Comedy Central shows, as well as any other Viacom programming, for weeks. The blackout also extends to online programming, and now FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is starting to pay attention.

Viacom’s channels went dark on Cable One’s TV line-up in early April because the two companies couldn’t agree on how much Cable One should pay Viacom to carry those channels. Viacom wants more money, which Cable One isn’t willing to pay — it’s one of many retransmission fights, which we have seen happen frequently over the last few years.

Viacom on the other hand sticks to its take and puts the blame squarely on Cable One. A Viacom spokesperson sent us the following statement via email:

“Cable One has chosen to no longer carry Viacom programming and, as a result, it is no longer available to Cable One customers in any form.”

Cable One isn’t the only provider affected by these types of online blackouts. Customers of Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico also can’t access Viacom programming online, and the American Cable Association, which represents smaller cable providers, estimates that dozens of its other smaller member companies could soon be affected as well. The group has been lobbying to get the FCC’s attention, arguing in a filing with the FCC that Viacom’s move goes against the idea of net neutrality:

“Viacom’s move to block a select group of broadband Internet customers regardless of whether they subscribed to the operators’ video offerings or not is inconsistent with the fundamental tenet of Internet openness that the Commission’s vacated 2010 Open Internet Order championed.”

It looks like the FCC is starting to pay attention to these complaints. Asked about the conflict, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said during a hearing this week that it is a trend that “we should all worry about,” according to a Los Angeles Times report (hat tip to DSL Reports). Of course, this doesn’t mean that the FCC will, or even can, do anything about it any time soon, but the timing could help to put more pressure on the commission to enact stronger net neutrality regulations.

]]>For online media companies, social platforms like Facebook and Twitter bring many opportunities as well as risks. An intelligent and proactive social media strategy can expand a brand’s reach. But the more heavily a media company relies upon a social media platform the more it relinquishes control over the customer experience.

]]>Vevo took another step towards becoming a full-on music TV network Tuesday with the launch of Vevo TV, a 24-hour live stream of curated programming. The channel is using MTV-like VJs, and is at launch available on the web as well as on mobile devices, Roku boxes and Xbox 360 gaming consoles.

The company wants to eventually take Vevo TV to cable distributors to compete heads-on with MTV, according to an Adweek report, and it is also thinking about launching genre-specific live streams. Think Vevo Hip Hop, for example. But ultimately, going live is all about devices and the way they’re changing how we watch TV.

Vevo followed up with a Roku app in December, and Cerda told me that he wants to tackle additional connected TV platforms as soon as possible. “There is a huge opportunity for us there,” Cerda said.

Continuous playback combined with curation makes a whole lot of sense for something like music videos on connected TVs. Users don’t want to pick up their remote control to pick and choose every single video, but instead want something up and running in the background without interruption. And if a viewer is ever bored by what’s playing on Vevo TV’s live stream, then there’s always tons of on-demand content available right within the same app. It’s the best of both worlds.

So how do Vevo’s cable plans fit into this? Cable obviously has a much wider reach than a device like Roku, but the real lure are cable-sized ad-budgets. One could argue that Vevo might compete with itself if the same programming is available on cable set-top boxes and connected devices. But ultimately, those set-top-boxes are changing, and the distinctions between streaming and cable distribution are going to become less and less visible to consumers (to hear more about the future of TV, check out our paidContent conference in New York next month).

In that world, a live TV channel – distributed on as many platforms as possible – will guarantee that consumers will always access to Vevo, no matter whether they’re streaming or viewing plain old TV. And that’s a smart move.

]]>Although it has only been a mainstream social network for a few short years, Twitter has formed a surprisingly tight and symbiotic relationship with the media, both because it is a kind of real-time newswire for information about events like the Arab Spring and the upcoming U.S. election, and also because it gives journalists an easy way to extend their personal brands into the social web. The company’s moves to lock down its network and control more of the content have raised some hackles in the journalism community, however, even as Twitter expands on its partnerships with select media entities such as NBC and MTV — and those stress points are only going to increase as the company’s ambitions and desire for revenue continue to grow.

A recent blog post from the Knight Center for Journalism at the University of Texas does a pretty good job of summarizing why some journalists and media executives might be uneasy about their relationship with Twitter and how they have come to rely on the network. Among other things, the post mentions the restrictions that the company recently announced on its API, which primarily affect third-party developers and apps — but could also wind up penalizing newspapers and other media outlets that have built their own features or services around Twitter using the same API. As the Knight Center post describes it:

“Recent changes to Twitter’s application programming interface (API) rattled some critics concerned about how journalists will use the popular social media platform to cover news in the future [and] beyond the recent API announcement, Twitter has seen a progression of censorship as the company matures that may threaten its credibility as a news source.”

So far, Twitter has said that Storify is safe from any repercussions due to the changes — despite the fact that the service (which was founded by former foreign correspondent Burt Herman) appears to be offering features that are frowned on by Twitter, according to the company’s somewhat confusing chart of good vs. bad apps. But given the way that the network has changed its modus operandi recently, by closing off external services such as Tumblr and Instagram and removing referrer links, it’s difficult to know how long that stay of execution might last for something like Storify. If a newspaper or media outlet has made that a key part of their journalistic process, they could be in for a rude awakening.

In a sense, media companies are suffering the same kind of angst that many developers and startups are feeling as Twitter evolves from being an open real-time information utility into a media entity driven by the need for advertising revenue to justify its market valuation. Just as those third-party services have built businesses on top of Twitter’s API because it was free, newspapers and other media outlets have come to rely on the network for the same reason — and could wind up regretting it in much the same way.

Twitter seems happy to have relationships with certain specific media entities, but for the most part they are television networks like NBC — which the company worked closely with during the recent Summer Olympics — and MTV, which is going to be making use of Twitter in a number of ways during its big Video Music Awards event later this month. Although many users seemed irritated by NBC’s delaying tactics during the Olympics, the head of Twitter’s media team, Chloe Sladden, told the New York Times that the network viewed the partnership as a huge success because it acted as “an amazing daytime teaser trailer driving people into prime time.”

Twitter wants to partner with some, compete with others

If you are a prominent media player such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, you can also get access to the “expanded tweets” or “Twitter cards” feature that the information network recently launched, which is the basis for much of its planned expansion. That allows more of your content to be shown inside a frame on the company’s website or inside its mobile apps — but as we’ve explained, this seems to be almost as much of a competitive move by Twitter as it does a helpful one for media companies, since Twitter is the one who gets the benefit of that content.

Meanwhile, as the Knight Center post noted, some media outlets are concerned about where Twitter’s desire to partner with TV networks and brands like NBC and MTV might take it, since the company was criticized fairly heavily for suspending the account of a British journalist who took potshots at its corporate partner during the Olympics. A Twitter spokesman said this was a misunderstanding related to the journalist’s posting of an NBC executive’s email address, but for many the incident was a critical breach of trust — and a sign that Twitter can and will control or even censor the content on its network as it sees fit.

And so, media outlets are left with a dilemma: Twitter is hugely useful in a whole variety of ways, and it has become a crucial part of much political and social news coverage. But at the same time, relying on a proprietary and increasingly competitive service for a key part of your business can be unwise, whether it’s Twitter or Facebook, and sooner or later media companies are going to have to confront that reality and figure out how to deal with it.

]]>Remember the time when you’d discover new music on MTV? The music network wants to get back to those roots of being a major force in the music space with a new web initiative that will give a million bands and artists their own, personalized web page on MTV.com. The new artist pages were announced by MTV President Van Toffler at SXSW Music in Austin, Texas, Thursday afternoon and will launch later this summer. A preview page went up earlier today.

Artists will be able to use the page to build relationships with fans and even make money with merchandise sales. “We are opening up all of our artist pages to let artists control them directly,” explained Shannon Connolly, VP of Digital Music Strategy for MTV Music Group, during a phone call earlier this week.

MTV.com currently has some 10,000 band pages with information about better-known bands. For its new web initiative, it has partnered with The Echo Nest and Topspin to discover and empower a much bigger universe of music. Connolly readily admitted that MTV has traditionally been focused on major label acts with professional promotion-machines behind them. “That door is still open,” she said, adding, “but we are also opening a door for any artist to walk in and share their content.”

Artists can claim pages

What does this mean in practice? The Echo Nest is helping MTV to discover bands online and automatically generate individual web pages for each and every one of them. Bands can then claim these pages and add content directly and then connect them to some of the other online platforms they are using. If a band is updating its fans via Twitter or Facebook, posting videos on Vimeo or photos on Instagram, then it can simply import these feeds and display them on MTV.com as well. “We don’t think this is gonna be a direct and immediate replacement” for other services, said Connolly.

However, MTV does want to offer bands some things that aren’t available on some of the other sites. One of the biggest differentiators will be tools that will allow them to build direct relationships with fans, including ways to collect email addresses in exchange for free music downloads. These tools are powered by Topspin, whose CEO Ian Rogers told me, on Thursday, that he is “really excited” about the collaboration with MTV. “It’s really big news for us,” he said.

Yet another platform for artists?

The question is: How does MTV get artists to embrace yet another platform, after signing up for profiles on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Songkick, YouTube and many other sites over the years? “That hurdle really is the biggest one,” admitted Connolly during our conversation. The key may be that MTV promises to feature bands on its own programming, be it on MTV News or as part of a soundtrack for some of its scripted content. “We know the power of being profiled on MTV News,” Connolly said.

That’s a key selling point for Rogers as well. Services can build new offerings for musicians all day long, he told me, but there’s no point in using them without an opportunity to reach new audiences. That opportunity exists on MTV.com, he argued, and even more so on MTV’s television channels. And Rogers agreed that it’s also a way for MTV to get back to what it’s good at: “These guys have music in their DNA,” he said.

]]>With news of its long-delayed German launch, it’s worth remembering that Spotify isn’t just a music player these days — it’s a platform. And one interesting app that appeared there on Tuesday was from Tape.tv, a service that aims to fill the gap left by the old MTV.

Tape.tv is essentially an online TV station with a few genre-specific sub-channels: think alternative, hip-hop and indie. They’re all filled with traditional music video content — there’s nothing user-generated here — but it does let the user like or dislike the videos they’re shown, which in turn allows the service to gradually customise what each viewer sees to their own tastes. In other words, it’s like Pandora for video.

The Berlin-based company has been going for around four years, collecting a catalogue of 45,000 videos and around 3.5 million users along the way, which is good work if you consider it’s only available in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

So why just Germany?

I caught up with Tape.tv a couple of weeks ago and picked up three reasons why they haven’t expanded further yet. The first is language – it’s only in German now, of course – and the second is the need to work out licensing rights in each territory.

The third, though, is that Tape.tv wants to have an editorial team in each region. Sure, the YouTube age may have put editorial power in the hands of the user, but this team is taking an approach that’s something of a return to the curated experience of TV.

Which is where strategies like the intriguingly gamified Spotify app come in. The app doesn’t play videos inside the client (as you might expect) but instead presents a series of daily stories that let the user choose the ending. The chosen ending triggers one of two playlists, and for each track the user can choose to click through to watch the video on Tape.tv’s site.

It’s a novel use of the platform. But don’t be fooled by the cute idea: Tape.tv is a very serious company, with 85 employees, many of whom are in sales, and ambitious plans.

The site already does big ad deals around video premieres for the likes of Lady Gaga and Rihanna, and has branched out to real TV with a ‘social music program’ on the ZDFkultur channel.

And it wants to expand. Once those language, licensing and editorial issues have been ironed out, the company tells me, the UK will be the first country to get the service in non-German form — and expect that rollout to come within the next few months.

Licensing loopholes

It’s very interesting to see someone aim for the space that the old, pre-reality-dreck MTV created and abandoned, but there’s another interesting story hidden underneath the hood.

However, while Tape.tv does include some on-demand functionality, via search and mixtape creation, its main thrust is the sit-back-and-relax TV channel format. Tape.tv won’t go into the details of its GEMA arrangement, although CEO Conrad Fritzsch did hint to Der Spiegel last month that the site was “no classical on-demand portal”. This may suggest that the company gets away with paying GEMA less than it would if it were a fully YouTube-like interactive service.

We’ve already seen Berlin’s Wahwah.fm aim to recreate the linear radio-station model for smartphones as a strategy that is designed specifically to work around GEMA’s more onerous pricing levels.

Perhaps the collection society has inspired a trend away from interactivity. If it has, the users seem to like it.

]]>Believe it or not, MTV actually does still care about music: its Music Meter mobile application has shed the beta tag with its 2.0 release, allowing users to see which artists are generating the most buzz across social-media networks and streaming sites. The new version is available for download Wednesday.

The app allows those to check out what’s happening in the world of music during the commercial breaks for Jersey Shore by ranking a top 100 list of artists and providing biographical information, song samples, and information about touring dates. Shannon Connolly, vice president of digital music strategy for MTV, says the app was downloaded 1 million times after it launched last year, “introduced millions of viewers to music they may not know they love yet.”

Like trending lists on Google (NSDQ: GOOG) or Twitter, MTV’s app merely measures which artists are enjoying a surge in interest over a given day, as to not permanently ensconce Justin Bieber at the top of the list. It is available for both iOS and Android and the latest version features the ability to sort artists by genre.

A publisher like MTV that has to operate at scale might be a prime candidate for a mobile Web strategy, but MTV is still focused on app development for now, said Mark Mezrich, senior director of product development. That being said, MTV’s mobile Web site incorporates some HTML5 technology and the apps are just the first installment in creating “a mobile experience around the artist experience,” he said.

]]>Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is expanding its Prime Instant Video library in a deal with Viacom (NYSE: VIA), bringing the total number of streaming videos available free Prime members to over 15,000.

The deal brings “thousands” of Viacom episodes to Prime Instant “over the next several months,” including MTV’s The Hills, Jersey Shore, The Hard Times of RJ Berger and several Real World episodes (what, no Teen Mom?); Comedy Central shows like Chappelle’s Show and The Sarah Silverman Program; and Nickelodeon episodes of iCarly, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants and Yo Gabba Gabba.

In Amazon’s Q4 earnings report, the company said it had 13,000 episodes available through Prime Instant Video, so the Viacom deal appears to add around 2,000 episodes.

The company also said that that in Q4 of 2011, “the number of Prime Instant Video streams increased nearly 300 percent” compared to Q3.